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According to this persuasion, turbo folk and Serbian involvement in Bosnian and Croatian conflicts would become inextricably linked from then on.[2] This left-wing section of Serbian and Croatian society explicitly viewed turbo folk as vulgar, almost pornographic kitsch, glorifying crime, moral corruption and nationalistxenophobia. In addition to making a connection between turbofolk and "war profiteering, crime & weapons cult, rule of force and violence", in her book Smrtonosni sjaj (Deadly Splendor) Belgrade media theorist Ivana Kronja[3] refers to its look as "aggressive, sadistic and pornographically eroticised iconography".[4] Along the same lines, British culture theorist Alexei Monroe calls the phenomenon "porno-nationalism".[5] However, turbo-folk was equally popular amongst the South Slavic nations during the brutal wars of the 1990s, reflecting perhaps the common cultural sentiments of the warring sides.[4]

Anto Đapić (former mayor of Osijek, and national leader of the right-wing Croatian Party of Rights) has declared "as long as I am mayor, there will be no nightclub-singers [cajki] or turbofolk parades in a single municipal hall".[6]

The resilience of a turbo-folk culture and musical genre, often referred to as the "soundtrack to Serbia’s wars",[7] was and to a certain extent still is, actively promoted and exploited by commercial TV stations, most notably on Pink and Palma TV-channels, which devote significant amount of their broadcasting schedule to turbo-folk shows and music videos.

Others, however, feel that this neglects the specific social and political context that brought about turbo-folk, which was, they say, entirely different from the context of contemporary western popular culture. In their opinion, turbo-folk served as a dominant paradigm of the "militant nationalist" regime of Slobodan Milošević, "fully controlled by regime media managers".[8] John Fiske feels that during that period, turbo-folk and its close counterpart Serbian pop-dance had a monopoly of officially permitted popular culture, while, according to him, in contrast, Western mass media culture of the time provided a variety of music genre, youth styles, and consequently ideological positions.[9]